Artist Susan Happersett of Jersey City, N.J., has come up with a novel twist on the venerable Möbius strip: a playful, eye-catching creation she describes as a Möbius accordion.
A Möbius strip, or band, is the remarkable one-sided surface that results from joining together the two ends of a long strip of paper after twisting one end 180 degrees. Mathematicians, magicians, artists, and many others have been playing with this intriguing object since its discovery in the 19th century by August Ferdinand Möbius (1790–1868), a professor at the University of Leipzig in Germany.